


Who Carry the Sea in Their Eyes

by raspberryhunter



Category: The Sea Witch - Adrien Amilhat (Painting 2017)
Genre: Gen, Magic, Misses Clause Challenge, Ocean, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: This has happened many times before, and will happen again: the woman at the mouth of the sea-witch's cave, calling and calling for her, her voice blending with the howl of the wind and the rush of the waves battering themselves against the rocks.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Who Carry the Sea in Their Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> Thank you to iberiandoctor for beta!
> 
> [The Sea Witch - Adrien Amilhat](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Yx6eX)

This has happened many times before, and will happen again: the woman at the mouth of the sea-witch's cave, calling and calling for her, her voice blending with the howl of the wind and the rush of the waves battering themselves against the rocks.

It is always a woman who comes. Men do not come to the sea-witch. Perhaps they are too proud. Perhaps they know they will not be welcome. Perhaps it is the women because they are the ones who watch their men go off to the sea with smiles on their faces and anguish in their hearts, and who keep the hearth and mark the storms as they roil the sea and sky.

This time it is a young tired-looking woman with a babe in arms and a child clinging to her skirts. What do they see when they look at the witch, these women who come to her? a frowning straight-backed old crone with iron-grey hair, dressed in practical and severe black, with thick black gloves on her hands?

The sea-witch does not care what they see. She learned long ago, from the sea-witch before her, not to care about what the others see, or think, or are. She only cares why they are here: for whom does this woman call, for whom does she come to the cave in the midst of the storm?

"My man," the woman says to the witch's question, while the child and the babe watch silently, their dark eyes fixed on the sea-witch. "And his crew. They went out in their boat hoping for one more catch before the storm. But the storm blew up sooner than anyone expected. They were supposed to be home hours ago."

The witch nods. "So you seek to save them." The woman nods back, sulkily. 

"Everything has a price," says the witch, "and to save a man from the sea, the price is gold."

"I'm only a fisherman's wife," the woman whines. "Where would we get gold, and if we had it, wouldn't there be a thousand places to put it?"

"Only gold," the sea-witch says, almost gently. 

"They told me you wouldn't haggle," the woman says angrily, and scrabbles in her skirts for a small gold coin that she gives to the sea-witch, without much grace.

The sea-witch does not care; gold is gold whether given with grace or no, and a life is a life. The coin in her hand, she strides past the woman and her children to where the land meets the sea, where the waves crash angrily on the rocks and the dark clouds scud across the sky. The water is cold on her skirts, but she is used to that. 

The sea itself seems to be fighting her, the waves a malevolent force that would drag her down if they could, and her cloak flaps in the wind; but she knows the waves and storm so well by now that all these things hardly matter to her. She reaches out for the water, draws it up into a thin calm clear thread; and her strong sure fingers inside the thick black gloves plait the sea itself into a net.

The gold runs out of her fingers like a rivulet, strengthening the net. The thin thread of gold will give the net strength to catch the woman's man from the waves and hold him. Perhaps even his crew, if there was enough gold. The witch is not sure there was. But if there was, and if the woman is very lucky, perhaps she will be able to catch the boat in the net, and thence catch them all.

The woman does not see it; she will go on thinking the sea-witch was grasping and greedy. It is only what the sea-witch expects. She does not care. If the villagers are too absorbed in themselves to understand that she is merely speaking the truth, what is that to her? But then she meets the child's wide eyes. The child's mother is looking away, anywhere but at the witch; but the child looks at the witch, and at the net, and back at the witch again.

It is no matter what a child thinks, of course. The sea-witch gives the net to the woman. "Cast it in the water while holding a corner," she instructs her as she has instructed so many others, "and pull what comes to shore."

The woman thanks her with ill grace and departs. Her child looks once again at the sea-witch, a lingering look, and then follows at her mother's heels.

*

This has happened before, and no doubt will happen again: a girl comes to the sea-witch's cave, alone. It is a bright day today, sunny and warm, with only a very gentle breeze disturbing the air. The waves lap comfortably at the rocks. On a day such as this, one might be forgiven for trusting the sea, for thinking it a friend.

The witch senses her and comes out of the cave, blinking her eyes against the light. Sometimes girls come to ask for a love-potion; the nets of the sea, that can catch a man out of the water, can also be used to catch a man's heart, if one is careful and canny. Though this girl seems young to want such trickery.

Then she recognizes the girl. She is older now, but the witch has seen her before: she is the daughter of the young mother who came asking for her husband's life, these several years gone. That woman was not the last to come asking, even during that year, and all those supplicants eventually become a blur in her memory, but the witch does remember the child with the wide eyes, the one who saw and understood the net-making.

"You saved my father's life," the girl says, "and his partners, and the boat, these three winters gone."

The sea-witch shrugs. It is what she does.

"Teach me how to weave," says the girl. "Teach me so that I may save lives as well."

The sea-witch raises her eyebrows. Of course, of course that would be what this one would ask. And she has the potential to learn, too; the sea-witch can see it in her eyes, those eyes that are not the color of the sea at all, but have some of its immensity in their brown depths. "Everything has a price," she says. 

"I thought of that," says the girl. She shows the sea-witch a copper coin. No doubt she has had to save and scrimp for that coin.

"Keep your coin, child," says the sea-witch, not unkindly, but the girl's eyes fill with tears.

"Then you won't teach me?"

This has all happened before; this girl is not the first to ask, nor to offer her coin for what she knows.

"Everything has a price," she says, "but this price is different from the price of the nets. I can teach you, but the craft will not be denied. Once taught, it will be your life." Even now, her fingers drum at her side, itching to weave the waves. There are no fishermen to save today, but at least she can catch fish for her dinner.

The girl stands still for a minute, thinking; the witch sees the moment when she understands how the witch came to be the sea-witch after all, always weaving her nets at the edge of the sea.

This is the moment when the girls who see, the girls who ask, make their polite excuses and leave or even run away.

The girl plants her feet firmly on the rock. "Yes, I want to learn," the girl says stubbornly, "if it means I can save lives." The girl adds, more quietly but no less intensely, "Otherwise I would marry a fisherman and we would work all our lives to gain our livelihood from the sea, and the sea would take him one day, whether I willed or no..."

The sea-witch's fingers still for a moment from their fidgeting, as she remembers: once, a very long time ago, she was a girl like this. Once she too watched as the women around her worried and wondered about their men and their children.

"Then," the sea-witch says, bowing to the inevitable, "come, child, and I will teach you." She pauses, trying to remember the customs and formalities she once knew.

"My name is Marie," says the girl, and then, greatly daring: "And yours?" She smiles shyly at the witch.

The sea-witch feels her face doing something unaccustomed; after a moment she realizes she is smiling back. She is not used to smiles, either in herself in others. The old sea-witch had never asked her name all those years ago, and had never used it; nor had her old sea-witch mistress smiled, and so eventually neither had the girl she had once been. She dredges up long-forgotten memories: "Beryl," she says hesitantly.

Marie tentatively holds out her hand.

After a moment, Beryl takes it.


End file.
